Mindstar Rising: The Greg Mandel Trilogy, Book 1

It's the 21st century, and global warming is here to stay, so forget the way your country used to look. And get used to the free market, too – the companies possess all the best hardware, and they're calling the shots now. In a world like this, a man open to any offers can make out just fine. A man like Greg Mandel for instance, who's psi-boosted, wired into the latest sensory equipment, carrying state-of-the-art weaponry – and late of the English Army's Mindstar Battalion.

Great North Road

A century from now, thanks to a technology allowing instantaneous travel across light-years, humanity has solved its energy shortages, cleaned up the environment, and created far-flung colony worlds. The keys to this empire belong to the powerful North family - composed of successive generations of clones. Yet these clones are not identical. For one thing, genetic errors have crept in with each generation. For another, the original three clone "brothers" have gone their separate ways, and the branches of the family are now friendly rivals more than allies. Or maybe not so friendly....

Fallen Dragon

In the distant future, corporations have become sustainable communities with their own militaries, and corporate goals have essentially replaced political ideology. On a youthful, rebellious impulse, Lawrence joined the military of a corporation that he now recognizes to be ruthless and exploitative. His only hope for escape is to earn enough money to buy his place in a better corporation.

The Abyss Beyond Dreams: Chronicle of the Fallers, Book 1

The year is 3326. Nigel Sheldon, one of the founders of the Commonwealth, receives a visit from the Raiel - self-appointed guardians of the Void, the enigmatic construct at the core of the galaxy that threatens the existence of all that lives. The Raiel convince Nigel to participate in a desperate scheme to infiltrate the Void. Once inside, Nigel discovers that humans are not the only life-forms to have been sucked into the Void. The humans trapped there are afflicted by an alien species of biological mimics.

The Reality Dysfunction

The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton is the first in Night's Dawn, a sweeping galactic trilogy from the master of space opera. In AD 2600 the human race is finally realizing its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets across the galaxy host a multitude of wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary space-born creatures.

Pandora's Star

The year is 2380. The Intersolar Commonwealth, a sphere of stars some 400 light-years in diameter, contains more than 600 worlds, interconnected by a web of transport "tunnels" known as wormholes. At the farthest edge of the Commonwealth, astronomer Dudley Bose observes the impossible: Over 1,000 light-years away, a star...vanishes. It does not go supernova. It does not collapse into a black hole. It simply disappears.

The Dreaming Void: Void Trilogy, Book 1

AD 3580. The Intersolar Commonwealth has spread through the galaxy to over a thousand star systems. It is a culture of rich diversity with a place for everyone. A powerful navy protects it from any hostile species that may lurk among the stars. For Commonwealth citizens, even death has been overcome.

Renegade: Spiral Wars, Book 1

One thousand years after Earth was destroyed in an unprovoked attack, humanity has emerged victorious from a series of terrible wars to assure its place in the galaxy. But during celebrations on humanity’s new homeworld, the legendary Captain Pantillo of the battle carrier Phoenix is court-martialed then killed, and his deputy, Lieutenant Commander Erik Debogande, the heir to humanity’s most powerful industrial family, is framed for his murder.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

Revelation Space

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.

Cast Under an Alien Sun: Destiny's Crucible, Book 1

Joe Colsco boarded a flight from San Francisco to Chicago to attend a national chemistry meeting. He would never set foot on Earth again. On planet Anyar, Joe is found unconscious on a beach of a large island inhabited by humans where the level of technology is similar to Earth circa 1700. He awakes amid strangers speaking an unintelligible language and struggles to accept losing his previous life and finding a place in a society with different customs, needing a way to support himself and not knowing a single soul.

Revenger

The galaxy has seen great empires rise and fall. Planets have shattered and been remade. Among the ruins of alien civilizations, building our own from the rubble, humanity still thrives. And there are vast fortunes to be made, if you know where to find them.... Captain Rackamore and his crew do. It's their business to find the tiny, enigmatic worlds that have been hidden away, booby-trapped, surrounded by layers of protection - and to crack them open for the ancient relics and barely remembered technologies inside.

Children of Time

Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.

The Phantom of the Earth: An Epic Sci-Fi Saga, Books 1-5

Here are the five thought-provoking postapocalyptic stories that lovers of science fiction can't stop talking about, gathered together in one volume for the first time. The futuristic theories, conspiracies, political maneuvering, and characters within these visionary tales will stay with you long after you finish.

Century Rain

Three hundred years from now, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable due to the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. Archaeologist Verity Auger specializes in the exploration of its surviving landscape. Now, her expertise is required for a far greater purpose. Something astonishing has been discovered at the far end of a wormhole: mid-twentieth-century Earth, preserved like a fly in amber.

Columbus Day: Expeditionary Force, Book 1

The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the Native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon came ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There went the good old days, when humans got killed only by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits. When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved.

House of Suns

Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every 200,000 years to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings.

Blue Remembered Earth

Critically acclaimed author Alastair Reynolds holds a well-deserved place “among the leaders of the hard-science space opera renaissance." (Publishers Weekly). In Blue Remembered Earth, Geoffrey Akinya wants nothing more than to study the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But when his space-explorer grandmother dies, secrets come to light and Geoffrey is dispatched to the Moon to protect the family name - and prevent an impending catastrophe.

A Window into Time

Whip-smart 13-year-old Julian Costello Proctor - better known as Jules - has an eidetic memory. For as long as he can remember, he has remembered everything. "My mind is always on," he explains. But when an unexpected death throws his life into turmoil, Jules begins to experience something strange. For the first time, there are holes in his memory. But that's not the strangest part. What's really weird isn't what he's forgotten; it's what he remembers. Memories of another life, not his own.

A.I. Destroyer: The A.I. Series, Book 1

It came from deep space. It sent the signal. Now our computers are killing us, helping the enemy drive us into extinction. But some of us refuse to die. We fight back. We learn. Jon Hawkins revives from cryogenic sleep in a drifting SLN battleship. The crew is dead and the main computer has been destroyed. Jon is a soldier, the start of the resistance, the one man with the will to beat the alien death machines that have terminated 1000 races. This is our hour as we face the ultimate evil, the galactic destroyer of life.

Fear the Sky: The Fear Saga, Book 1

From the Audie-nominated narrator of The Martian. In eleven years' time, a million members of an alien race will arrive at Earth. Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships' huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space. These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out.

The Collapsing Empire: The Interdependency, Book 1

Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars. Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war - and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

The Kasari Nexus: Rho Agenda Assimilation, Book 1

Jennifer Smythe escapes Earth's invasion by the insidious Kasari race, hijacks an alien starship, and survives the deadly passage through a wormhole. But escape is short-lived.... When Jennifer emerges on the new world of Scion, she is confronted by the same deadly enemy. Now the Kasari have sided with the planet's angel-like elite against the warrior underclass, but with the intent of ultimately ruling both.

Publisher's Summary

Julia Evans, billionairess owner of Event Horizon, has for 15 years been the power behind England’s economic renaissance – but now she’s in trouble. With her husband missing, and rival companies suddenly claiming to have acquired a technology impossibly superior to anything on Earth, she has no time to take notice of a single flower delivered anonymously. But this flower possesses genes millions of years in advance of any terrestrial DNA. Is it a cryptic alien message, or a poignant farewell token from her husband?

One man might discover its origin – but Greg Mandel will not be alone in his desperate search. And, as they both now discover, simply being first in the race isn’t nearly good enough when the Nano Flower begins to bloom.

Nanoflower completes the Greg Mandel trilogy. Compared to the first two installments, Greg is now comfortably middle aged, a father with 4 kids (and one on the way), and a respected and successful fruit grower. Over the intervening 15 years since Quantum Murder, Julia Evans has healed Royan, they've become lovers, and have their own children all while continuing to run Event Horizon.

The story unfolds with Julie receiving a "flower" that appears to be of alien origin and points to Royan who has been missing. Julie engages Greg to track him down. At the time, rumors of a next generation technology begin surfacing resulting in a second made scramble. Greg goes up against a psychopathic techmerc following the same leads for the flower and the technology. The action is fast and furious, and nearly nonstop. While the eventual resolution is not unexpected, the denouement is still surprising.

Hamilton really begins to flex his muscles as a sci-fi grandmaster with this tale. The resulting alien biology (and microbiology) is refreshingly original and well detailed. Computer personalities are extended and space mining and colony settlements are ongoing. At its heart, this is a love story with multiple couples, each re-enforcing the theme. Perhaps the only legitimate criticism is the introduction of some new psy powers for Greg that while critical to the plot could have nevertheless been at least alluded to earlier. The narrator also deserves kudos for a fantastic range of voices.

All three of these stories are great, fast moving stories set in a world it is easy to believe in that still has plenty of surprises. Peter Hamilton is a master and it is great to have these three stories online now also. Highly recommended, although I think the first one was the best one.

Where the first two installments of the Mandel Trilogy showed great potential, The Nano Flower has Hamilton hitting his stride as an author showing why he is one of the best fiction writers working today. Excellent character development, well conceived plot, believable human reactions and an incredibly well conceived universe make for a great listen. While not offering up the multiple plots and immense complexity of his later works, the plot is complex and interesting in a way not often seen in SciFi. Excellent editing keeps the pace high enough to hold your interest but not at the expense of dialogue and scene setting. Toby Longworth's excellent narration made the book even better as his consistency of individual characters and variation among voices is first rate.This book makes me hope Audible is working hard to bring even more of Hamilton's works to the format!

This thing went way off the tracks in volume 3. It was so predictable I had figured out the ending within the first few chapters, then the book kept trying to convince me with logic that made no sense that something else was going on. Despite how predictable it was though, the whole thing made no sense. The characters didn't have good reasons to think or behave the way they did. Terrible end to a great series. I'll just pretend this one doesn't exist.

Great story as I've come to expect from Hamilton. The only complaint I have is I swear quite a few time I could here the narrator turning pages and taking odd pauses. I think the editing could have been cleaned up a little more.

I really enjoyed this series!! The characters are fantastic. I liked the narrators voice and the way he did different character's voices. But he would pause at odd times and you could sometimes even hear him turning the page. Very odd.

"The Nano Flower" is the last book in the Greg Mandel Trilogy. I read the first book about 10 months ago and forgot to finish the last book until now. It took some time to get my ears adjusted to the story again, but I have to agree with other reviewers that the last book was better than the first and second. Of course I am used to of Hamilton's space opera, but I enjoyed this sci fi. Great description of the alien and good character development. The Nano Flower was an awesome twist in the plot. I'm never too disappointed of Peter F. Hamilton.

Peter Hamilton always writes great aliens, in part because he really thinks about how the biology might work. This is an early example with some clever ideas in play. It winds up being a bit predictable (in fact, the story here really deserves a 4.5 rather than a 5.0 for its predictability at key points), but it manages to be quite suspense filled even though one can sometimes see where it must be going. There is a satisfying set of resolutions in the lives of characters who have been the reader's friends and heroes since the first novel in the trilogy (Mindstar Brigade), and there are some excellent combat sequences, as well as some very neat technologies described in sufficient detail that one can imagine living in the world that Hamilton has created. All in all a very satisfying listening experience, enhanced and elevated as always by Toby Longworth's excellent characterizations.

I genuinely enjoyed this final audiobook of the series. It's feels set on a grander scale though as cyberpunk meets Space Opera and I think that Hamilton just about made it. That said I didn't think that the narration was as consistently good as the previous books and it felt as though the author let the plot get slightly away from him.

It's still a good conclusion to the series and very well worth a read. It once again combines a mystery with the science fiction and the characters are clearly important to the author and receive sympathetic finales to their nature.

I will look out for more titles by Hamilton in the future.

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

Mark

Kalmar, Sweden

3/28/12

Overall

"Epic conclusion for Greg Mandel Trilogy"

The narration was excellent of course. The editing could have been better. The occasional sound of page flipping is something you can live with of course since the story and conclusion are great. Top notch!

A fantastic ending to a series that i loved. Great characters, interesting story arc, super ending.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Christine

petersfield, United Kingdom

8/17/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"An excellent trilogy"

I wasn't sure about this series but once I got into the first book I was hooked!!Very different to his other trilogies but equally clever and addictive. He can't let Greg go surely?

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

MrP.W.Clare

7/15/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"good "page" turner"

very much a thriller pace without too much depth. interesting premise especially with hindsight. as the book was originally written in the mid nineties when global warming and new labour were in power.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

G. Inch

Scotland

7/25/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Gripping Stuff! "

A fascinating adaptation of an excellent, fast paced slice of contemporary cyberpunk. Every bit a match for the written version. Loved it. Toby Longworth does an excellent job of bringing Greg Mandel to life.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Jannie

4/16/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Just a great relaxing book"

Just one of those books that once you get going you can't put it down.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Progeni

1/9/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Excellent trilogy. Can't wait for PFH'S next book"

Excellent trilogy. Can't wait for PFH'S next book as this wraps up his entire back catalogue for me, and what an excellent way to close it out.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Ron

9/15/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Greg goes out with a wimper"

I was left ultimately disappointed with this the final book in the Mandel trilogy, the chase until the final chapters was typical, however the wrapping up of the book I felt lacking, too much sci-fi babble to cut the corners of what has until that point been a good series.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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